


Demon Training

by Prime627



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: But it needed to be seen by other eyes, Ciel is so OOC, FML, First official Black Butler fic and it kinda sucks, i did a thing, may or may not continue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 15:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11923437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prime627/pseuds/Prime627
Summary: Ciel is a demon now, and Sebastian has to show him how this whole demon-thing works. Except, with a lack of everything that he once felt and experienced, Ciel is left with a whole lot of questions





	Demon Training

Ciel had, unfortunately, been to many funerals. Too many, Madame Red had said repeatedly. And then when she was gone, too, he listened to the priest basically say exactly what the rest had said before him:

_He/She is in Heaven now, rescued from the pit of Hell_.

How would they know? Madam Red _killed_ people! How did _she_ get into Heaven? Was it the fact that they were prostitutes and not "real" people? Did she, in fact, reduce how many children were aborted, or how many men cheated on their wives?

When Ciel prodded Sebastian about Heaven and Hell, he only gave a few words.

"Heaven is in the clouds. Hell is in the dirt."

Being as Sebastian had been in both places during his life, Ciel had hoped that he would offer a bit more, but no. The demon had to continue to be vague about everything, covering his tracks and only leaving the present to be examined.

Finally, at Ciel's rebirth as a demon, he was allowed to see _exactly_ what went on in Hell.

He wasn't so much as invited in as he was allowed in, and had he been human at the time, he was sure he would have been mauled. He wasn't so sure that mauling was entirely out of the question, but with Sebastian growling over the chaos, he was safe, so long as Sebastian had anything to say about it.

"You failure," a she-demon coughed, growling softly. She sounded like she was gargling marbles. She spat a bit of blood out. Her skin was red and black, and while she lacked the horns and pointed tail the pictures portrayed, she was still startling in appearance.

Sebastian whirled on her in an instant and he shed his human guise, standing over her in a cloud of black and green smoke, twisting and vile. She backed down instantly, crying and sounding like a wounded dog. The sound made Sebastian wince, and he dropped back to the ground in front of Ciel. He was in a different form now, with high heeled boots, a cape, and...

He flicked his wings once, looking back at Ciel. "Don't mind her...in fact, don't mind anyone. Pretend you are among peasants. Everyone does."

Ciel tried, but the screams of pain, horror, and absolute agony kept him glancing around. Hell wasn't all that he had imagined. He expected swarms of people writhing like disgusting bugs, fire and intense heat blowing everywhere, lava simmering in puddles on the floor. Though the color scheme was in fact red and black, it was lukewarm, had no smell, and for the most part was quiet, like walking through a long cooridor searching for a door.

There were many doors.

"There are six hundred and sixty-six doors in total," Sebastian was saying, sighing softly. "And most are empty." He checked every once in a while to make sure Ciel was with him, mostly when there were a lot of aggressive or suspicious demons around.

"What?" So few? He had been expecting six million, not six hundred.

"Mm." Sebastian stopped short, sighing. "I hate this part."

A dog's growl grew from the shadows, and a second, and a third. Sebastian took a torch off the wall and held it out in front of him.

"Cerberus, has no one been feeding you?"

Ciel, no stranger to dogs, looked up into the glowing red eyes of the black dog with three heads. "Isn't that...?"

"Greek mythology? Sure is. Cerberus here has many names. I call him Ugly, for instance, or Shithead. Sometimes I lean towards Asshole. What do you think?"

Cerberus continued his growling before side-stepping at a loud call, and Sebastian slipped quickly by, keeping a good distance between himself and the dog. He curled his lip up at it and dropped his gaze. Cerberus snapped at their heels as the door closed.

"You failure!"

The chandelier of glowing candles above them fell to the ground, plunging the large room into darkness, but before then, Ciel had seen a throne, and around it, a dozen skulls, each bearing a Roman numeral carved into its forehead.

"You told me you had the soul, but now I see it is another demon!"

The voice shook the room, rattled Ciel's brain, and made him fall to his knees. Sebastian, on the other hand, seemed fine, as Ciel wrapped arms around his leg and clung, trying to block out the sound of fury.

Sebastian stood perfectly still, though Ciel could sense he was irritated. He even thought he heard a quick flurry of thoughts before the voice started up again.

"DO YOU THINK _ONE_ MORE DEMON WILL COUNTER THE BALANCE?! WHERE IS MY ARMY?!"

Ciel held stronger at the ferocity of the words, and he heard something else break. When he opened his eyes, Sebastian was carrying him out the door. Cerberus seemed to be chuckling away as he sniffed the floor eagerly for some kind of snack.

"Perhaps I should have waited before I introduced you to him, but I was hoping that his rage would be quick. However, we have wasted about a hundred years arguing your worth. He is still unimpressed."

A hundred years? "We were only in there for at least two minutes!"

Sebastian looked down at him. He was in his "regular" get-up, with his butler clothes and Ciel's father's-inspired haircut. His red eyes hardened. "You have a lot to learn."

* * *

"Fallen angels eventually become demons," Sebastian lectured. "Demons can also be made, as you were. Demons are also born." Sebastian crossed his arms with a huff. "Fallen angels have both parts. Demons born have both parts. You, however, and every made demon, have the part you were born with. However, you may choose to manipulate yourself to have both, or either one or the other."

Ciel relaxed slowly, shifting on the chair in the...dining hall? The table they were sitting at was long, so long that the room it was in might as well have been a hallway, so long that halfway down, Ciel couldn't see any further because down there, the lights were not lit, because down there...

"It would be a waste of time to light such futile things," Sebastian sighed. "Though, they used to be lit. Almost always...we would have fiests every night and every day. We practically could grow fat if we ever wanted to..."

Manipulation of the body was key. Sebastian explained that they could manipulate their bodies to do anything their hearts desired. In fact, Ciel was already plotting what to do with his body once he knew how to manipulate...

Sebastian cupped his cheek, drawing in the dust on the table, sighing. "In my lifetime, I have carried three children to term. None have survived. Born demons go through rough treatment. They are almost scum to us, since they wail and fight and squabble for food. We have to feed them. They can't feed themselves, and they eat a lot. I have killed one of my children in order for myself to survive famine, and I hated to see her go..." He looked at Ciel slowly. "They are a bit like human children. They need time and care and patience. As demons, we have none of that to offer, which is why we don't contract with anyone under the age ten, and if we do, most of us kill the thing before the contract is fulfilled, and its normally a ridiculous contract. One of my mistakes consisted of listening to a ten-year-old who struck a contract with me. I was a young demon. I thought it would be easy. He wanted to be famous. I followed him around, practically took care of him, and finally, his needs outgrew my patience, and I killed him. If I had let him live a few more seconds, decades for him, I suppose, he would have been famous, and my snack would have been a feast."

Ciel looked down at the table and he scowled. "So..."

"You will have a harder time fitting in with our kind, but not a very hard time. Fallen angels who come here are whipped into shape. You will be pecked on in comparison. Your limbs will grow back. Fallen angel limbs..." Sebastian nodded his head at a one-armed demon walking by. "...don't. Not even when they are demons. Fallen angels are practically reduced to humans, if a bit lower on the pecking order. They are weak, infertile, and always hungry. Nothing can fill their stomachs fast enough. Meanwhile, demons and angels live thousands of millions of years at a time, either living off light and cloud-dust or the souls of the living." Sebastian squeezed his hands into fists. "Demons are fertile, can go hundreds of years without eating, and are very strong. Angels can go millenia without eating, are infertile, and are even stronger if given the chance. However, an angel who has spent too much time on Earth loses strength every day, loses feathers from its wings. Like Ash. He allowed himself to slowly decay. Had he returned to Heaven, I doubt he would have been let back in. He would have been a fallen angel, and then a demon."

"Why is there a middle?" Ciel tilted his head.

"Punishment. It was the only thing He and the other one could agree on, that there should be a middle ground. Few angels that fall ever get back up. In seventy-two hours, they have to save a human life, and not just any human life. One that will impact another and another and another after that. Angels see that easily. Fallen angels, lower than humans, cannot. Demons cannot, either. If they fall from Heaven, they can only keep so much so long as they don't self-destruct on Earth."

"You were an angel?"

"An arch-angel." Sebastian scratched his head, sighing. He tapped his fingers on the table next, huffing. "The higher you are on the rung, the harder you fall, and I fell hard. However, I did manage to keep a few gifts. I'm sure you are aware of them by now, and after I survived the fallen angel drama, I gained the speed of a demon, of course...I regained strength. I'm not as strong as I was, but compared to what I was after that..." He gave a shiver, groaning. "I will never fall again."

Ciel leaned forward slowly, grabbing at his suit. "Why did you fall?"

Sebastian growled lowly, getting up. "I may be your butler, but here, I am a demon. I will always be a demon here. You cannot force me or order me to give up answers while we are here. You? You're just a fledgling right now. You haven't had your first contract. You're _nothing_ here without me. Without me, you'd be raped. I won't let that happen to you." Sebastian took his head in his hands, growling. "Because they will manipulate you into manipulating yourself. You will give yourself things you never needed to spare something that wasn't in danger. Demons do that. Demons lie and deceive and trick and manipulate. Why do you think we're here and not in the clouds?"

"I-I thought you said you and Heaven were strangers..." Ciel's mind was spinning. Why was Sebastian acting like this? What riled him up so much? Everything that happened today...this past century? Decade? It was mind-numbing. How did anyone keep track without the sun?

"Before we were strangers, we were friends. But all friendships eventually fade if they are not maintained or respected. Do you understand?"

* * *

Demons don't need to sleep, but there was a grand bed in Sebastian's quarters anyway. As Ciel remembered his lecture earlier, he blushed at the thought of what goes on under such sheets.

Sebastian collapsed into the mattress, groaning. "Still as stiff as I remember," he groaned. " He pressed his face into it.

Ciel rested a hand on the mattress, pushing down and blinking. It didn't give. He lifted the sheets and stared dumbly at the flat rock slab. "Uh..."

"Demons feel neither pain nor pleasure, at least not in the way humans do. These sheets look expensive and soft, but if you were to feel them with a human hand..."

Ciel took the brittle blankets in his hands, his eyes widening as he let them drop.

"Angel sheets are much finer and softer, and their mattresses are clouds." He rested his chin on the slab, huffing. "Well, come on. Climb in. You may not feel tired, but your brain is still in human mode, and it will appreciate a break."

Ciel slowly sat down and pulled the blankets up to his chin, then he laid down and stared at the ceiling.

Nothing.

He felt absolutely nothing. He could have been laying on a cloud or a bag of elbows and knees. It didn't matter anymore.

He couldn't feel.

Ciel turned his head to look at Sebastian, who had closed his crimson eyes. He cautiously reached out and-

Sebastian's eyes flew open, seeing Ciel's hand coming to rest on his face. He blinked once and let it happen.

Nothing.

Tears started to fill Ciel's eyes and he drew away, rolling over and screaming. "I can't feel!"

Sebastian sighed and closed his eyes, rolling the other way with his arms crossed. What a child his master was! When Sebastian found he couldn't feel, the first thing he did was run through fire and swim in the lava pits. The first thing Ciel did?

He cried.

Pitiful.

"Young master, please silence your tears. You will attract unwanted attention and I would rather not fight again for the right of you."

Ciel rolled over and clung to his back, squeezing. "D-do you feel this?" He pulled at every inch of Sebastian. "Do you feel me? I don't feel you! I don't! Why can't I feel anything?"

Sebastian closed his eyes, pinching between them. He inhaled, held it, and he thought for a moment. Humans, he reflected, felt very out of place if one of their senses were robbed from them. For example, he had taken care of a young woman who frequently got sick, and lost her sense of smell. He learned not to waste time with expensive spices because she couldn't _taste_ anything without her nose. Sure, she still had her sense of taste, her tongue worked, but she couldn't tell various things apart. She died not knowing the true contents of her last meal, and Sebastian was upset his finest work wasn't realized.

To have his sense of touch robbed from him, Sebastian figured Ciel felt almost blind, having been surrounded with silks and the finest cloths (and the worst of them all in one point of his life), and now he couldn't feel a _thing._

Sebastian was willing to bet that Ciel would have rather wished he was blind.

"Young master, I feel pressure, and I feel where your hands grab at me, but I cannot feel the texture of your fingerprints, the warmth or lackof in your palms." He rolled over. "This serves an advantage, you know. If you were stabbed or punched, it would barely register, and you could keep fighting."

Ciel was calming down, not from anything Sebastian was saying, but because he was running out of things to cry about, and he was probably running out of steam. Demons had very few tears to shed. Sebastian had almost wasted all of his on nothing. He doubted he had more than three left. "I just..."

Sebastian cupped his face and wrapped the blankets around him firmly, creating pressure and sensation, sure, but compared to what humans feel, it might as well have been nothing.

But to Ciel, it was everything. He silenced his tears and laid his head down. He wasn't tired. It was just nice to lay down and pretend to be ready to sleep.

"Do we dream?"

"No."

"Do we have to sleep or rest?"

"Never."

"What if we get hurt?"

"We heal slowly."

"How do you manipulate your body?"

Sebastian smiled slowly. "With your mind. If you wish you had longer hair, then you will have longer hair. If you wish you were taller or shorter, your body would follow suit, but it is wise to do it knowingly. Many alterations that happen can be without knowledge, and can either assist or destroy."

The older demon watched as the younger lowered his head and he sighed, touching his chin. "Alright...that's enough of that."

* * *

Ciel ran outside, staring up at the moon and stars with such profound clarity. His eyes focused and refocused, allowing him to see textures in ways he never dreamed. He collapsed into the grass and he ran his fingers over the blades, bringing up the feel of grass in his mind and clinging to it.

Sebastian watched quietly, sighing softly. "This impresses you?" But he knew the answer already. Ciel was happier where he felt he belonged rather than surrounded with demons, rock, and misery. Perhaps if he made the quarters look like Ciel's old room...

"How far is home from here?"

"Eons away."

As Sebastian spoke, the sun flitted by and the world was plunged back into night. Ciel sat up and beat the groud with his fist.

"It goes by so fast!"

Sebastian tilted his head. "Of course it does...what were you expecting?" He sighed and he walked over to Ciel, taking his shoulders in his hands. "Okay, okay, fine...just, relax, okay?"

Ciel squeezed his eyes shut at a tingling sensation down his spine and when he opened his eyes, things had seemed to slow down. Sebastian moved slower, more like he used to at his leisure, and when Ciel looked up at the sky, it was still night, where in his mind he knew it should be morning.

"Demons _can_ slow time down to a crawl, at least in their own minds and bodies. Since you still do not understand manipulation yet-"

"When do I learn?"

Sebastian pinched between his eyes and then swept his hair back, groaning. "Soon."

This was a mistake, Sebastian thought to himself as he crossed his arms.

He should have made sure to keep his arm. He should have devoured the soul as soon as he could.

This wasn't what he had envisioned at all.


End file.
